by Elin Peer
“How can we help you?” Sara, a pretty woman in an expensive-looking pantsuit, asked. I had met her last night and knew that she was the lawyer who had invited Charles to meet Conor. I also knew from the children that Sara and Conor often slept together.
Conor watched her and then he glanced around the room at all of us. “Children, please take your plates out, go upstairs, and begin reading. It’s almost eight and I’ll be up in a little while.”
We waited for the children to disappear and then Conor continued. “If any of you think that I could harm one of our family members, then it’s best if we part ways. You’re all successful people and you’ll do fine out in the world.”
“No, no…” All around the table protests sounded.
“I know I seem invincible, but it’s a blow to have someone accuse me of harming a woman I loved.”
“We’re here for you.” Ciara reached out and placed her hand on top of Conors.
Conor was quiet as other members assured him that they couldn’t imagine him doing anything to Sandra.
“Yes. Whatever you need.” Sara, who sat next to him, leaned her cheek against his shoulder. “We’re here for you in this lifetime and the next.”
“How do I know?” His voice was low and when he raised his gaze to look at Sara, warning signals flared up in me. For just a flash, I saw the crazy behind the façade. I looked to Charles hoping he’d seen it too, but he sat with deep frown lines and an expression of sympathy for his friend who was claiming to be wrongly accused.
Sara blinked her eyes. “You know we’d all die for you, just as you’d die for us. That’s not a question.”
Whoa, whoa! My eyes widened as Conor let Sara’s words hang in the air while meeting the eyes of the people sitting at the table.
Ciara nodded to support Sara’s statement and so did the twins and the others. This was so uncomfortable and intense that a sound escaped my throat like a protest to their talk about death.
For a long second Conor’s eyes lingered on Charles before moving on to me. His penetrating glance felt like he was assessing me and I was searching for something to say to change the heavy subject.
Turning his attention back to Sara, Conor spoke in a soft voice that still filled the silent room like he had screamed the two words. “Prove it!”
Sara flared her nostrils at his challenge but gave a short nod.
While I looked on in disbelief, Conor pushed his chair back and walked to a painting in light colors portraying a woman in white walking through a field of corn with her hands reached out to each side, touching the crop with the sun shining down on her. Pushing the painting aside, Conor opened a safe and retrieved a gun.
My eyes were wide as I squeezed Charles’ hand and gave him a what the fuck? look. He looked as stunned as me and so did everyone else at the table.
Putting down the gun in front of Sara, Conor looked at her. “It’s ready to fire, so prove it.”
She licked her lips and swallowed hard. Her eyes fixed on the gun in front of her. When no one said a word, she picked it up with her hands shaking.
I elbowed Charles, who finally seemed to wake from his shock.
“Sara, don’t be stupid. Put the gun down.”
“No.” Conor kept staring at Sara but pointed at Charles. “Sara knows what she’s doing. Words mean nothing. Only action does. Don’t say you’re willing to die for someone unless you’re ready to back it up.”
Sara was breathing heavily but she kept her eyes on Conor and lifted the gun to her head with her shaking hands.
“Don’t do it.” I moved to the front of my seat preparing to intervene.
The moment felt like slow motion as I looked around the room hoping someone would stop this madness, but they all sat transfixed by the silent conversation taking place between Conor and Sara.
When I turned back to Sara, her eyes were large and moist while the barrel of the gun was pointing at her right temple and her finger was on the trigger.
“Would you die for me?” Conor’s question was a low mutter meant only for Sara, but we all heard it.
The gun was shaking in her hand and perspiration showed on her forehead. “Yes.”
Conor leaned closer to her. “Show me.”
Sara’s closed her eyes and took a deep breath before there was a click of the gun.
Loud gasps sounded from all of us. And then Conor bent forward, cupped Sara’s face and kissed her on the mouth. When he pulled back, she had tears running down her cheeks.
“That’s what loyalty looks like.” He was holding a finger under her chin, and beamed at her with pride. Taking the gun from her, he put it on the table and pushed it to the center of the table. “Anyone else willing to show me?”
Ciara reached for the gun.
“Careful.” Conor had a sly smile on his lips. “Maybe it’s loaded with a single bullet and Sara just got lucky.”
Ciara pulled the gun toward herself, but with a hand on top of hers, Conor stopped her. “I know you’d die for me just like I’d die for you.” His eyes turned to Charles. “Can you say the same?”
Next to me, Charles, paled and swallowed hard. My heart was speeding and I recognized the acute stinging pain to my scalp from the time I barely missed a car accident and adrenaline rushed through my veins, alerting me to the danger. If this was Conor’s idea of Russian roulette then there was a chance that the gun was loaded.
“Charles?” Conor kept staring at him and pushed the gun closer to our side of the table.
My fingers dug into Charles’ thigh under the table not caring that it might be painful for him. I couldn’t speak my mind freely, but I could show him that he wasn’t alone.
“Where did you get a gun?”
“That’s irrelevant,” Conor said without breaking eye contact with Charles.
The atmosphere was thick and tense as the two men sat looking at each other.
Don’t do it. Don’t do it, I repeated over and over in my head as if Charles would be able to pick up my message.
Charles’ tics were making him bob his shoulders and blink his eyes. “I don’t think I should touch that gun. With my tics I might aim at me, but end up shooting one of you instead.”
Conor’s laughter was like letting out air from a balloon that had been blown up too hard. Looking around the room, he grinned. “Come on, don’t look so shocked. You didn’t think I’d hurt any of you, did you?”
Laughter of relief filled the room as everyone assured him, and each other, that they always knew it was only a playful test.
Charles smiled too while I just sat there like an observer getting a brutal insight into the power Conor held over them.
“Wow, I think I sweated through my shirt. That was intense.” I forced a laugh when all I wanted was to run the hell away from this asylum.
“It was a joke, Liv.” Charles and some of the others laughed as if collectively trying to normalize what had just happened.
Feeling Conor’s eyes on me, I played my part and elbowed Charles. “You should have warned me that the humor in this house is pretty dark.”
“Well, now you know.” Charles used a sing-song voice and took his plate to the kitchen while talking over his shoulder. “I have to be at Trinity in an hour and I’m taking Liv with me. She wants to see the buildings from the inside.”
“Will you be home for dinner tonight?” Ciara asked as if this were any regular morning.
“I’m not sure. We might go out for dinner downtown. I’ll call you when we know our plans.”
When Charles and I were outside and walking to the train station, I waited until we were out of earshot from the house before I stopped him and burst out, “You have to admit that was crazy.”
Charles let out a deep breath and looked back the way we’d come. “Yeah, that stunt surprised me. I don’t know what that was about. I’ve never seen anything like it.”
“Ciera and Sara were literally ready to die for him. What the fuck?”
Charles shook
his head. “I know. But that’s the kind of people they are. It’s authentic and real. They live life to the fullest – they walk the walk and talk the talk.”
I stared at him. “Who in their right mind would ask someone to shoot themselves to prove their loyalty?”
“Conor knew the gun wasn’t loaded. It was a test. He wasn’t going to let us kill ourselves.”
The way he was defending Conor worried me. I had been so sure that after this stunt, Charles would see that Conor wasn’t a nice guy.
We began walking again. “What if I hadn’t been there? Would you have pulled the trigger to prove your loyalty to him?”
“Nah-uh. I’m a loyal person, but I don’t’ mess around with guns. Besides, that whole thing about dying for each other is illogical to me. What would my loyalty be worth if I was dead?”
I kept walking with his hand in mine. “Do you think he got mad when we asked Sara to put the gun down?”
“Maybe, but we had to. We couldn’t know that the gun wasn’t loaded.”
“At least the children weren’t there to see it. I was really scared.”
“Conor is super protective of the children. Of course, he wouldn’t do it in front of them. They wouldn’t understand that it was just a joke.”
I didn’t argue with him or point out that jokes were supposed to make people laugh and not almost pee themselves in fright. They could call it a prank all day long, but it had been a test of Conor’s control over not just Sara but the rest of them too. Not one of them had intervened or protested, except for Charles, but he’d only done it when I pushed him to. I was well aware of how cult leaders pushed people to accept irrational behavior as normal, and this morning, the Red Manor group had just been pushed further.
Sitting in the train, we were both quiet, until I asked, “When you say Conor is a genius, what do you mean? What makes him so special? What kind of work does he do?”
“He used to work for the government as a code breaker. Most of his work was classified so he can’t talk about it, but he was recruited because of his insanely high IQ.”
“Then why did he stop? Seems a bit young to be retired.”
“He’s not retired. He just didn’t like being used as a tool by the government. Conor managed to take the salary he made and invest it in a way that makes him a multi-millionaire today. He’s extremely gifted that way and keeps making a lot of money on investments. That’s why he now runs the Red Manor Foundation, which works on philanthropic projects to benefit children around the world. At the same time, he’s taken a lot of time to travel and study with gurus in East India where he learned to connect his energy to a higher vibrancy. Now, he’s careful of who he lets into his circle but those of us lucky enough to learn from him benefit tremendously. I’m telling you: if you can sit down and have a deep conversation with him, you’ll understand how rare he is. It’s like he can read your mind and look into your soul.”
I managed to change the subject and talk about something else, because if I had to listen to one more minute of Charles’ adoration for the psychopath who’d just challenged his followers to kill themselves, I would throw up in a public train.
CHAPTER 18
Brainwashing
Charles
For three days everything seemed to work fine.
Liv spent a lot of the time with the children and there were times when I’d almost get jealous because they took too much of her attention. Every morning Liv would make me feel like the happiest man in the world when she came to my room. We’d make passionate love and start our mornings discussing our future.
She no longer talked about her next destination, and I didn’t bring it up. I’d promised her that we would visit Paris together, and an idea was starting to take root in my mind. I could invite her to Paris over Christmas and if everything was still amazing between us, I would propose to her.
She had called Paris the most romantic city in the world and for that reason alone, it seemed like the perfect place for us to exchange engagement rings. My grandfather had only known my grandmother for a few months when he proposed to her, and my parents had been quick to get engaged too. It ran in my family; now that I’d found the perfect woman, I had no need to wait around for a few years to test the waters.
I was happy to see that Conor had taken a liking to Liv too. Last night, he’d talked to her for at least an hour about her past and her plans for the future. She told him about her dream to work as a forensic anthropologist to help police departments identify mysterious or unknown remains. It didn’t surprise me that with Conor’s vast network he knew someone who could help her achieve that dream.
The episode with the gun on Tuesday morning had freaked Liv out, so I was grateful that she got to see the real side of Conor that we all loved so much.
On Friday afternoon, however, Liv and I came home to a house that was buzzing with half of the residents gathered in the kitchen.
“What’s wrong? Why are you all in here?” I asked Sara, who stood closest.
“Because the garda is here again.”
Liv and I exchanged a glance. “What do you mean again? I wasn’t aware they had been here before. Those two who came by on Sunday night were private detectives.”
“I know, but Tuesday the garda stopped by to ask questions.”
“About what?”
“We don’t know, but we’re assuming it’s those awful rumors about Sandra.” Sara’s long brown hair was braided in a circle around her head, her make-up was perfect, and she was in another of her smart pantsuits with high heels that made her at least five-ten. Like Ciara, Sara was born and raised in Ireland, but after living with Conor for four years, she had adopted his clean accent and spoke without an Irish brogue.
Liv’s eyes were wide open as she leaned in and whispered to me, “Maybe the police got the videotape from the surveillance camera that the detectives talked about.”
“Yes, maybe. But in that case, it’s good news because the video will show that Conor is innocent.” I turned to Sara. “Is he alone with the police?”
Sara nodded. “Yes. I asked if he wanted me there, but he declined.”
“We’re lawyers, Sara. We need to be by his side.”
She rubbed her wrist. “I know, but he said no.”
I wasn’t about to let someone pin a murder on my mentor. After asking Liv to wait with the others, I went upstairs to Conor’s study and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
Opening the door, I saw one guard standing close to the door and another sitting in front of Conor’s desk with a notepad in his hands. Conor looked calm when he asked, “What is it, Charles?”
“You shouldn’t talk to them without a lawyer present.”
“Yes, Sara already told me that, but since I’m innocent, I’m not concerned. I’d prefer to do this alone.”
Walking into the room, I shook my head. “That would be crazy. I’m staying.”
His jaws clenched but he didn’t insist on my leaving.
The two officers shook my hand and introduced themselves as O’Hara and Williams before they went back to questioning Conor.
“I would like to get back to the time before ye changed your name to O’Brien. Can ye tell us more about the three restraining orders against ye?”
Conor, for once, looked visibly annoyed. “It was in the early days of my mastermind group and I wasn’t as finely tuned to whom I worked with as I am now. You could say my desire to help and fix people brought me in contact with some troubled individuals. There was a woman named Janet that I took in after she had experienced severe violence from her ex-partner. I hid her from her ex for her protection, but he found her and it’s my biggest regret that I wasn’t there to stop him when he dragged her back home with him. Of course, I went after her, and in my eagerness to save her from him, it got to an altercation between us. In the end, she chose to stay and filed a restraining order against me, but I always knew it was done under his influence.”
“And wh
at about Clara Nielson – accordin’ to her file, she accused ye of rapin’ her.”
“That was dismissed.”
“Aye, it says she withdrew the charge but there was still a restrainin’ order.”
Conor shrugged. “I always take a risk when I allow wounded souls into my life. Clara was disturbed and the trouble started after I found out that she was using drugs. I had to kick her out and that’s when her accusations began. It was a simple act of revenge on her part.”
“And Nina Evans?”
Conor sighed. “Oh dear, I’d forgotten about her. It was so long ago. Well, in her case I take the blame. She was my first love and I took it hard when she broke up with me. I was eighteen or nineteen and a romantic at the time. I’m embarrassed to admit it, but I would serenade her below her window, send her flowers and love poems. Unfortunately, Nina was overwhelmed and felt that I was stalking her.”
I was starting to see why Conor cared so much about loyalty and trust between him and his members. With a history of wrongful accusations made against him, he would have learned his lesson.
“Why did ye change your name to O’Brien?”
“I had moved to Ireland and was fascinated with the history of the O’Briens. It’s a strong name that holds power, and it fit me well.”
“Ye weren’t trying to hide yer troubled past?” The officer looked down at his pad. “Besides the restrainin’ orders, ye have a history of fraud and blackmail.”
That piece of information made my tics act up and it didn’t escape me how the officer by the door stared at me.
“Look, I’ve never asked for anything from my members. They only contribute what they want to. The rule is that they give to the Red Manor Foundation according to the value they feel they’re getting from working with me. The charges you are referring to were made by a father to one of my members who couldn’t understand that his daughter would have been generous enough to donate a large sum. He was sure she was a victim of fraud and blackmail.”
The officer frowned. “These weren’t just charges, Mr. O’Brien. Ye were found guilty of fraud and blackmail.”
